Hank: Death of a Dog
I had to put Hank down today. He was a rescued German shepherd. When I got him, the shelter said he was probably about 10 years old. I’d had him for two years. This morning, he couldn’t walk at all, not even drag himself with his front legs, the culmination of a slow loss of function in his hind end. He also refused to eat or drink, which was the sign for me to call the vet. The vet showed up at 1:00 this afternoon. She was sympathetic and efficient. I wore my Alpha Bitch tee shirt to call up the courage to be the one who makes these decisions. The whole thing took about 20 minutes, which I appreciated. I had already done much of my grieving for this uncomplaining, easy-going old dog and didn’t want something drawn-out. I clipped a bit of...
Read MoreThat Nice Girl with the Dogs
Winter began without warning one day in October. I was sitting on the cold tile floor of the examining room helping to hold my dog, Sirocco, when the vet explained she had only a matter of weeks. “The steroid medication I’ve prescribed will delay the progress of the cancer, but there’s no cure. Most likely, she’ll be active and happy for another four, maybe six, weeks. Right up until the end.” As I had been taught, I didn’t cry or protest, but fought for calm, clutching the fur of her scruff as the white room ballooned, then shrank. The rest of the vet’s words were almost lost to me under the terrible shushing of blood in my ears. “When the end comes, it’ll be fast, within a day, most likely.” I called her Sirocco because she was the color of sand and swept along...
Read MoreFeeling the Future
Just about everybody has had an intuition or a hunch or a “gut feeling” about a future event. But can we really feel the future? Some scientists are attempting to find out. I’ve decided to describe Daryl Bem’s Experiment 2 from his (2011) publication, Feeling the Future (see reference below). Dr. Bem, a respected research psychologist, magician, and debunker of ESP (psi) demonstrations, seems to me an ideal person to conduct research on hunches. Also, the procedure of the experiment is relatively simple, and the results are statistically quite unlikely to be due to chance. PARTICIPANTS: 150 Cornell undergraduates. 107 women, 43 men. METHOD: Procedure: There were three steps in this experiment, all fully automated on a computer in order to reduce...
Read MoreMagic, Science, and Psi
A magic show! Undergrads and grad students alike eagerly crammed the auditorium to see one of our psychology professors, Daryl Bem, present an hour of tricks, illusions, and sleight-of-hand. Bem, who had joined the Psychology faculty at Stanford in 1971, was a respected research scientist. And he proved to be a great showman. By the final curtain, I was ready to believe in magic. But Dr. Bem was not only a professional magician. He also debunked demonstrations of ESP (ExtraSensory Perception- today called “psi.”) For example, he appeared in an Introductory Psychology video series in which he revealed how a magician “sets up” card and mind-reading tricks. (See the Annenberg Learning website for the series produced by Dr. Phillip Zimbardo called “Discovering...
Read MoreAnimal Prophecies
In the last post, I described the power animal, or guardian spirit, as a primary source of special powers and knowledge for the shaman. Often, these spirit beings assist in divination. Divination refers to acquiring knowledge (through nonordinary means) about something hidden (eg., the cause of an illness) or about the future (eg., the success of a hunting trip). (See Harner’s “The Way of the Shaman,” Harper & Row, 1990.) A prophesying power animal plays a role in my novel, “A Second Chance Life.” In the following scene, Jude tells his friend Sara about a raccoon who he believes is quite extraordinary: In the hush of the closed-up car, Jude said, “Well, I guess it all began when I was seven. See, I wanted a puppy real bad. A little puppy I could play with,...
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